Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 20 February 1973, only a year after the traumatic event of Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday. The trauma of Bloody Sunday for the Northern Irish Catholic community was caused not only by the brutality against the victims, but also by the Widgery 'whitewashing' that occurred afterwards. Lord Widgery's findings caused a trauma that widened the crevasse, further rupturing the Irish identity, and silencing hundreds of Irish voices by denying them the right to tell their stories. While The Freedom of the City is primarily a response to the traumatic moment of Bloody Sunday, this study aims to examine Friel's use of the historical frame to point towards another trauma--that of the doubly colonized, silenced woman, as represented by the only female character in the play, Lily Doherty. Lily, a Northern Irish Catholic, struggles under the effects of colonial rule and suffers from a consequence of this governmental colonization--unyielding patriarchy, where the males in her country who lost their power to the British colonizer attempt to assert what power they have left by victimizing women. But Friel writes for Lily soliloquy where she breaks through her colonization, articulating and realizing, for the first time, her oppression. In Lily's soliloquy, Friel responds to both traumas, that of the nation and that of the female, releasing the character Lily from the doubly oppressed world in which she lives. Friel's carefully placed soliloquies give voice to the silenced narratives lost in trauma. The soliloquy guides Irish audience into and through the traumas of their history, in an effort to heal those gaping wounds left by generations of colonization.

Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 20 February 1973, only a year after the traumatic event of Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday. The trauma of Bloody Sunday for the Northern Irish Catholic community was caused not only by the brutality against the victims, but also by the Widgery 'whitewashing' that occurred afterwards. Lord Widgery's findings caused a trauma that widened the crevasse, further rupturing the Irish identity, and silencing hundreds of Irish voices by denying them the right to tell their stories. While The Freedom of the City is primarily a response to the traumatic moment of Bloody Sunday, this study aims to examine Friel's use of the historical frame to point towards another trauma--that of the doubly colonized, silenced woman, as represented by the only female character in the play, Lily Doherty. Lily, a Northern Irish Catholic, struggles under the effects of colonial rule and suffers from a consequence of this governmental colonization--unyielding patriarchy, where the males in her country who lost their power to the British colonizer attempt to assert what power they have left by victimizing women. But Friel writes for Lily soliloquy where she breaks through her colonization, articulating and realizing, for the first time, her oppression. In Lily's soliloquy, Friel responds to both traumas, that of the nation and that of the female, releasing the character Lily from the doubly oppressed world in which she lives. Friel's carefully placed soliloquies give voice to the silenced narratives lost in trauma. The soliloquy guides Irish audience into and through the traumas of their history, in an effort to heal those gaping wounds left by generations of colonization.

Northern Ireland, Bloody Sunday, trauma, dual colonization, female subaltern